Complexity of a typical electronic circuit, for example, an integrated-circuit device, has increased dramatically. At the same time, the length of the design cycle has typically remained unchanged or has become shorter. To meet the shorter design cycles for the more complex designs, circuit designers increasingly rely on characterization of the designs in order to identify any problems early in the design cycle. The short design cycles and the complexity of the integrated-circuit devices make cost- and time-prohibitive an approach that characterizes a design by actually realizing the design in hardware and testing it in a laboratory.
As an alternative to actually building a prototype of the design, circuit designers have increasingly relied on electronic design automation (EDA) tools, such as circuit simulation and characterization tools. Effective circuit simulation tools provide a way for the designer to simulate the behavior of a complex design, identify any problems, and make alterations and enhancements to the circuit before arriving at a final design. That iterative design process has in turn improved the reliability of the end products that incorporate a given circuit design.
The effectiveness of a circuit characterization or simulation tool depends on several criteria, for example, accuracy and efficiency. Traditional approaches to characterizing circuits sometimes fail to meet those criteria. In other words, the traditional approaches may fail to provide results that match the behavior of an actual prototype relatively closely. Alternatively, or in addition, traditional approaches may prove inefficient, i.e., they may use relatively large computing resources, take relatively long times, or both. The failure of the traditional characterization techniques results in increased costs, longer design cycles, less reliable end products, and/or less-than-optimal designs. A need therefore exists for accurate and efficient techniques for circuit characterization.